Mother's Day action, results and what's next...

Well I certainly remembered to get my Mum a Mother’s Day card this year and make the trip down to South London to see her, but I did have a good reminder! All the previous week I was working with activists and other organisations like Save the Children, Oxfam, White Ribbon Alliance and Mumsnet to urge people to send a Mother’s Day message to the leaders of the 3 UK political parties. This was part of our maternal health campaign where we are drawing attention to the human rights abuses that lead to women dying in childbirth or due to pregnancy-related complications.

The Mother’s Day cards urged the party leaders to support the Manifesto for Motherhood, drawn up by the coalition of NGOs and detailing what needs to be done to tackle this problem. 

Because of the fantastic work of activists and the organisations involved, the 3 UK political parties did endorse the Manifesto.

Labour’s response from Secretary of State of International Development Douglas Alexander:

Conservatives’ response from David Cameron:

Lib Dems’ response from Nick Clegg:

But it doesn’t stop there. We don’t want this issue to go away and we need to ensure that all the parties know that they will be held to account for their committments after the election whirlwind is over.

The UK has been a world leader on this issue for some time, but in the run up to the election we want to ensure that this continues to be the case. We have some significant events this year; the G8 in Canada in June and the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) Review Summit in September. We need to make sure that maternal health is the priority at these meetings and real commitments are made.

So please keep sending the cards to the party leaders to show the strength of feeling in the country for this issue. And check out the individual country work we are doing together with women and organisations on the ground.